


Sacred Fortunes

by irondadismyreligion



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Pepper Potts, Fix-It, Hurt Peter Parker, Ironfamily, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark Coparenting Peter Parker, Multi, NOT May erasure (trust me), Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Parent Pepper Potts, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Time Travel, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26676655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irondadismyreligion/pseuds/irondadismyreligion
Summary: Peter and Tony, along with Nebula, are left stranded in space after battling Thanos. Returning home to find that May was one of the 50% that turned to ash, they try to make a family with those that are left. Albeit dysfunctional, with time and patience, it works.Over the course of 5 years, a boy and his mentor must learn to pick up the pieces of their shattered universe.But nothing will be the same. Nothing can bring back what they lost.Until they can.(an endgame fix-it, of sorts)
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark, Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Nebula & Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Peter Parker & Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 41
Kudos: 169





	1. the royal court

**Author's Note:**

> Hope ya'll like it, lemme know :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and so... they drift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Hope you all like this start to my story, please enjoy :)

They live in a celestial kingdom, now. Isolation reigns, his cruel, jeering rule unencumbered by subjects' pleas for rescue. By his side, hunger sits, a queen serving only to torture her husband’s victims, drawing out the process with agonising emptiness in their stomachs. 

Hope is merely the court jester, a mocking presence that serves as a reminder. 

Any chance of survival becomes statistically more minuscule each moment they drift. 

It doesn’t take Peter long to work out this pecking order, using metaphors in his head that don't feel like metaphors when he’s living them. He imagines talking to these figures, attempts to bargain with them. Each time they refuse, sentencing him and his companions to one more day, one less meal. 

To Peter, the most haunting fact is that the days are numbered. The king will soon tire of his playthings, and cast them away with a flick of his hand to the executioner. 

So, the Milano drifts, carrying a mechanic without his tools, a cold, toughened daughter of Thanos, and a superpowered kid from Queens. What luck. 

It isn’t as though they haven’t tried to escape their inevitable death. 

Forty-eight hours of fuel was all they got for their tireless, back-breaking work to repair the damaged fuel cells. Peter’s hope (the jester, as he called it now in his mind), a flickering yet ever-present candlelight amongst the darkness, is extinguished, leaving nothing but a black vacuum of despair as soon as the Milano stutters to a stop, unmoving in space.

Mr. Stark’s eyes, which have remained stoic and a source of strength, close, Peter watching the movement as if seconds stretch into minutes. The man’s hand clutches the steel frame attached to the walls of their sleeping quarters, fingertips flushing with mottled shades of white and pink under the pressure. When his eyelids flutter open, they no longer hold their steely resolve. Something inside him shifts in those seconds. He turns to Peter, a soft, sad kind of expression on his face, not quite smiling but not devastated either. A fruitless attempt at reassurance, when Peter knows just as well what their fate will be. 

He wants to say something, anything to dissolve the wrinkled worry etched into Tony’s forehead, but instead, he turns, finding himself empty of words and unable to face him. He feels inadequate, given all that Tony did to comfort him on Titan, when Peter collapsed, vomiting up bile and saliva and pleas for a version of reality where their allies didn’t turn to dust. He barely registered Nebula’s cool, stony facade shatter as she turned away from them, unable to look at the pair. 

(Later, Peter wonders if she was uncomfortable seeing the two so close when she had never been given the same luxury with her adoptive father. From the little they talk and the moon Thanos crushed Tony underneath, he didn’t seem the type.) 

Even having just left the sleeping quarters, the urge to curl up in a ball and never wake again beckons. It seems unfair that after a life of losing his parents and then his uncle, he should have to lose his time, too. He wanders the ship aimlessly until he stops at the viewing deck, back to the stars that had swallowed them whole. His back arches against the cool wall, breaths coming out in heaves as he tries to process that this is it. This is the end. 

Peter finds some small comfort in the fact that here, away from Earth, the stars are a good source of contemplation as well. 

What was it that kept Peter clinging onto the side of the space-donut even when the air grew too thin? A mistake? A choice? A sense of obligation, or responsibility? Mr. Stark would say pure stubbornness, but after countless lab lessons and training sessions, Peter knows that’s Tony’s knee-jerk response to Peter’s childish naivety and reckless behaviour, and never really what he thinks. 

He thinks that it might be the conviction to do right over wrong, the kind that Ben left him with when he bled out on the night which changed Peter’s life forever. But that felt like eons ago. 

Days pass. They try not to talk about the damaged fuel cells. They don’t want to waste the time. It’s too draining to think of what-ifs. 

___________

Nebula is certainly something else. She speaks in quiet, huffy tones, her voice laced with controlled, slow-burning anger. They don’t talk much of Thanos. Only small pieces of information, here and there. She talks mostly of other worlds, of her sister, entertaining him with stories of epic battles and myths of her home planet. Of her life before her father. 

Peter tells her about Queens, in between paper football games, Mr. Stark’s favourite to play with Nebula. Tony likes to interject intermittently, while Peter regales grandiose retellings of his escapades as Spider-Man, including his battle with the Vulture, and even the lady with the churro. 

“What is a churro?” She asks, the word foreign as it curls oddly around her tongue. 

“It’s like, a sweet sort of bread, or dough, that’s fried and rolled in sugar. They’re really good, you’d like them.”

She nods slowly, considering the concept. “I would like to try one, someday.”

Tony winces, swiveling in his chair until he stalks off into the other room. Peter and Nebula hear her mistake, but let the awkward moment slide as he continues his epic story, Peter giving her a soft smile as if to say  _ don’t worry about him.  _

Nebula isn’t one to show affection, either. Peter considers it a victory when she places a hand on his shoulder after he’d emerged from the sleeping quarters with red-rimmed eyes, plagued with dreams of home. But after a few days drifting, he learns this isn’t the extent of her fondness toward him. 

“You take some of your portions and give them to the boy. This is unequal. Why?” She questions Tony, one night. They think Peter is sleeping. The small amount of food isn’t doing much to combat his growing fatigue.

“He’s got an enhanced metabolism. If I don’t, we’ll be talking back to his skeleton in no time,” Mr. Stark replies gruffly. Peter knows that with Tony’s healing infection, it wasn’t the best idea to be reducing his portions. (Peter confronts Tony later... The man denies any such thing and forcefully tells Peter to drop the subject). 

“I will give him some of mine-”

“You don’t have to. I got it handled.”

Peter hears the scuffle of plastic sliding across metal. 

“Take them,” she insists, leaving no room for argument. 

Without enhanced hearing, Peter would have missed the last part of their conversation. 

“Thank you,” Tony whispers. 

Peter falls into a heavy sleep before he can hear anything else. 

By day twenty-two, Mr. Stark’s infection runs its course, but the sharp angles of bones protruding underneath milky, paper-like skin can no longer be ignored. The lack of infection won’t matter for much longer. Only two more rations of food, each. Oxygen will be gone by the next day. 

Faces gaunt and hollow, sickly in appearance, Peter and Tony stay close, keeping each other in orbit, never too far from reach. It’s some kind of gravitational pull, one that neither decides to vocalise but keeps them sane, whether it be through tall tales of MIT or funny stories from Peter’s childhood, or sometimes a vicious debate about scientific theory. 

Peter wakes in cold sweats that day, shaking, and lungs working overtime. He darts upright, startled by the unsettling visions that haunt his dreams as a permanent fixture. Thanos, Titan, ash. It was enough to live through it once, let alone have it on repeat in the back of his head. 

Even after waking, fatigue settles back in Peter’s bones. His eyes yearn toward the welcoming tendency to shut again. He leans back against the wall, sighing deeply. 

“How’re you feeling, kid?”

Peter doesn’t even notice the man walk in. His senses must be dulling. It’s odd that Mr. Stark even left sleeping quarters. 

“I’m fine. Where’d you go?” Peter hates how raspy his throat feels. 

Tony takes the spot next to Peter, leaning back with him. Peter grimaces at the  _ pop  _ in Mr. Stark’s knees.

Only then does Peter notice what’s in his mentor’s hand. It’s the Iron Man helmet, cracked and busted to hell, its damage a reminder of the battle. It rests on Mr. Stark’s thigh as he runs his thumb over the metal. 

“I was gonna leave a message for Pep.”

There it is. The final admittance of defeat. 

“Probably wouldn’t even find it.” 

Peter regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth. They are cold and blunt, a sword slashing through the already crumbling pretense of being found. 

“I’m sorry-” 

“You’re right,” Tony shakes his head, dismissing Peter’s apology. A moment passes.

“But, every time you don’t say goodbye, and you think, this is it? You regret it. Every time.” 

He speaks with such assuredness, undoubtedly one that comes from experience. The man’s past is speckled with blood and war and loss. Tony’s eyes are somewhere else, for a brief glimpse. 

Peter thinks about his parents, about Ben. He wishes he’d given them all a proper goodbye. A hug, and an  _ I love you _ . He’d given Ben scrambled pleas and cries that were received by a void swallowed by the cold night, and for his parents, Peter can’t remember at all. 

“I’m scared,” Peter admits, curling his fingers around the sheets. 

“Of death?” 

The teen shakes his head vehemently.

“Of leaving May behind.” 

More terrifying than death is the thought that May will live in mourning, the last of the Parkers to survive. Truly, terribly alone. He can’t do that to her. Not after Ben. 

“I wish you’d stayed behind.” 

“I would’ve followed you anywhere, Mr. Stark.” 

Tony sniffs, nose wrinkling up like it always does when things get too emotional. Two years of limping into Mr. Stark’s lab with a bullet wound or two from patrol gives a guy some perspective on that fact. 

“I know. You’re too stubborn, always thinking of me before yourself... I just didn’t want this for you, kid.” 

Peter lets out a huff of air. “I chose this. It’s not your fault.” So maybe that’s what it was. A choice. A choice to help Mr. Stark, to protect the little guy. 

“You shouldn’t have had to. End of discussion.” His words are sharp, so Peter bites back a retort. 

A beat. 

“I think I’ll leave a message later. I’m still kinda tired.” 

Tony nods, patting Peter on the leg. “You get some more rest, kid. I’ll wake you up when it’s time for some more food.” 

________________________

“The kid is with me, which you’ve probably figured out by now. Make sure that May gets this. He said he’d record something for her later. He’s not, uh, not doing too great...but, you know how he is, he’s putting on a brave face… Oxygen will run out tomorrow morning... and that will be it. I know I said no more surprises, but I gotta say, I was really hoping to pull off one last one, especially for him. But it looks like... well, you know what it looks like. Don't feel bad about this. I'm mean, actually, if you grieve for a couple weeks... and then move on with enormous guilt... **** I should probably get some food for Pete and lie down for a minute, rest my eyes. ”

The voice stills. 

“Please know, when I drift off, it’ll be like everything lately, I'm fine. I'm totally fine. I dream about you. Because it's always you.”

Peter stiffens under his blanket. This is a private conversation. Tony’s last words for Pepper. He shouldn’t be listening. Peter tries to keep his breaths even, chest rising and falling in a rhythm he imagines matching his sleep. A moment later, he feels a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

“Rise and shine, Underoos.”

Peter pretends to wake, hands rubbing at squinting eyes. He forces out a yawn. 

“And the Oscar for worst fake sleeper goes to…” Tony lightly taps on the edge of the bed, mimicking a drum roll. Peter gives a loose chuckle. 

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“Don’t sweat it.” 

Peter pushes himself up into a sitting position, trying his best not to wince. His arms are stick-thin and tremble under his weight. 

“Food?”

Tony reaches to the bedside table, grabbing a silver foil packet.

“Here.”

Peter’s stomach growls, even knowing that the contents are just some exotic kind of dried fruit. 

A heavy silence hangs between them as he nibbles on the food, permeated by an unrelenting fatigue that has been there for days. 

“What’s Nebula doing?”

“Either performing a satanic ritual or playing around with the buttons at the front of the ship. I can never tell the difference.” 

Peter sighs. 

“Hey, Mr. Stark?”

“Mmm?”

“What’s one thing you would do, if you could go back, just for a day?” 

He smirks. “God, what’s got you into such an existentially depressive mood? It is my face? If I look like I’m on the edge, you can tell me.”

“Maybe the fact that we’re going to die tomorrow, but I’m just guessing.” 

Tony swallows down the changing tone of the conversation, nose sniffing slightly. 

“...I wanted to marry Pepper. So I guess I’d do that. How about you?” 

Peter shifts, pulling up the sheets over his lap. 

“I wanted to go to Paris. Ben and May went for their honeymoon, they used to talk about it all the time. Ben always wanted to go back, and take me to the Louvre, since I liked to paint so much when I was little. May said she wanted me to try all the foods. Croissants, cheeses, snails…” His voice trails off into the quiet of the room, eyes intense with memories of happier times. 

“Still paint?”

“Not really.” 

“All I can see is Spidey swinging off the Eiffel tower after sneaking out of his hotel.”

“You party in Germany a little too hard in your superhero suit and they never let you live it down,” Peter huffs, mouth turning up at the corners. 

“I’ll take you there.”

Peter’s brow furrows in confusion. “Hmm?”

“Right now. Let’s go. Close your eyes, sit back, and relax. Your in-flight meal will arrive shortly.” 

“Don’t be stupid.”

“C’mon, how many people get to say they’ve travelled to France with Tony Stark?” 

Peter sighs in resignation, leaning back with his eyes closed, “You’re kind of weird.”

“That’s what they pay me for, kid. It’s kinder if you say eccentric, though.” 

Tony’s soft smirk dissolves as Peter settles against the wall. 

_ Kshhhhh _ . A noise that sounds unremarkably like a static-y speaker erupts from Tony’s mouth, eliciting a small chuckle from Peter. 

“Excuse me, passengers, please fasten your seatbelts and prepare for descent. We will be arriving in Paris very shortly.” 

Peter opens one eye. “Are you telling me that Tony Stark didn’t even treat his favourite intern to a private jet?” 

Tony reaches over and puts a hand over Peter’s face, shoving it gently back. “Shhh, you’re ruining the experience. I can barely hear all of the Metallica songs I put on my playlist for this trip.”

Peter huffs out the ghost of a chuckle. 

“Alright, fast-forward, I hate baggage pick-up.”

Peter cracks another eyelid. “You’ve never travelled on anything that wasn’t a private plane before.”

“Hush up, you’re ruining the ambiance.”

The teen lets Tony continue with his antics.

“...We’re off the plane, we’ve checked in at the Shangri-La hotel in Paris, Nice view, great service, cute little soaps you wanna eat, the whole she-bang.”

“What’s the thread count of the sheets?”

“Irrelevant.”

“I need the full picture.”

“A trillion. Only the best.”

Peter nods his head approvingly. 

“You insist we eat, so I indulge your spiderling appetite at a cute little bakery. Aux Délices Du Pont D'Iéna was nice, last time I visited. You eat at least six croissants and drool butter all over your chin, repulsing any cute French girls and guys that even look your way, and then we walk to watch the sunset over the Eiffel tower.” 

Tony pauses. Peter can almost feel the weight of his gaze but imagines the scene nonetheless. 

“It’s spring, almost summer, so the air is warm and we pick a spot on the grass, away from the rest of the tourists to take in the view. I badger you about MIT, again, and you pull out a god-forbid-it, beret. We take all the cheesy tourist photos, including the one that looks like you’re holding the tower in your hands, before heading to the Louvre, which I’ve hired out after hours as our personal playhouse.”

“Excessive, but sure.” 

“We look at every single piece of art until I decide to take you back to the hotel because I can’t take one more second of you posing inappropriately in front of sculpted penises and asking me to take a picture for Fred.”

Peter laughs. “You know it’s Ned, and I would not do that. You’d beg me to take those photos of you to send to Colonel Rhodes.”

“Quiet, it’s my story. Anyway, we order in-room service and eat terrible food with lots of fresh bread, and I send you off to bed. The end.” 

“Anticlimactic.”

“I’m not much of a storyteller. People usually make up stories about me.”

Peter, eyes now open, picks at another piece of dried fruit, ripping it up into small little pieces in his palm. 

“Thanks, Tony.”

“Tony, huh? I should have treated you to Paris earlier if it would get us on a first-name basis.”

Peter smiles, dragging his fingers through his unkempt, greasy tresses. “Don’t get used to it.” 

They sit in a comfortable silence, Peter’s mind still thinking about France and all the other places he would never get to see.

“I keep thinking that somehow we’re going to get out of this.”

Tony’s face remains expressionless, fixed on the door. 

‘I’m sorry.”

“No regrets, Mr. Stark.” 

The older man smiles wryly, eyes crinkling at the corners. He sniffs again, looking down at his hands. 

“Don’t lie. You know I can’t stand your self-sacrificial bullshit.”

“I know you love it.” 

“Whatever you say, kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think? Let me know in the reviews and have a lovely day, should upload again soonish :)


	2. that great beyond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the drift continues...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol remember when I said I'd upload soonish and then months passed and yes I'm a liar but I didn't mean to. Anyway, stay safe and enjoy x

“Hey, May… Uh, I hope you’re okay. I want you to know I’m fine. Mr. Stark’s here with me, so I’m not alone. And Nebula, she’s a superhero colleague, kinda. She’s nice…and scary,” he breaths, the sad resemblance of a chuckle exiting his mouth. 

“I followed Mr. Stark onto the ship. It wasn’t his fault, I just thought, I thought I could help. Things didn’t turn out so good, which you know. I just wanted to let you know I’m okay. I’m not scared.” 

Peter drags the helmet a few inches closer, the metal scraping against the floor lightly. His fingers tremble with fatigue. A whoosh of air escapes Peter’s mouth in consternation, dismayed by the tension determined to take a stronghold over his words.

“I didn’t realize this would be so hard…” his voice wavers through a forced smile, the sound raw and thick and tangled with regret. 

“Everything went to shit when Ben left. You tried to pretend you were okay, but I knew. You could hardly take a breath in that stuffy old apartment, because he was everywhere, and I know that I was holding you back from grieving for your own husband,” he cries out, wiping at his eyes. 

“I’m really sorry for that. Making it so much harder. I don’t want that for you again, which is why I am so sorry for this… for this mess I’ve left you in, May.”

Peter’s head drops into his hands, fingers twisting at a few unkempt tendrils. He draws in a deep, laboured breath, before raising his eyes to the heart of the projecting light. 

“I don't know what I can do to make it better except tell you that I love you. And you don’t need to worry about me. Please, don’t.”

In the next room, Tony’s head hangs low. Nebula’s brow is furrowed. The ship’s walls are somehow unbearably thin. But maybe that’s just the deafening silence from being in the middle of nowhere. 

“Sorry,” he whispers. Peter fumbles with the helmet until the blue glow retreats back into its eroded recesses, remains of hope to see May again with it. He pushes it back with a sigh, leaning on the wall behind him. Peter stays like that for a few minutes, letting the time pass as he stares out into the vast unknown, finally allowing the isolation to sit by his side, and that aching hunger to claw at his insides. 

* * *

“Oxygen will run out in approximately five hours. I suggest we make ourselves comfortable before we… suffocate.” Nebula interjects, voice cutting through the room with her unique, strange intensity. 

They’re sitting around the makeshift dining table after it had been decided spending their last, precious hours alone was only slightly more depressing than present circumstances. 

Tony rolls his eyes, turning away from her. “Ever heard of subtlety, Avatar?” 

Peter shoots Tony a scathing look in reprimand. “Really?”

Tony raises his hands, tilting his head downward in apology, conceding. He knows that quippy remarks aren’t helpful, but it's hard to erase those parts of his nature. 

“We’ve got some time. I feel like we should do something, you know? Not just sit around and mope,” Peter mumbles. 

“Too late to fill in the bucket list, I’m afraid.”

“No shit.”

“Language,” Tony chides, a reflex by now.

Peter huffs, pushing himself back from the table. “I’ve got five hours until I die and I can’t get in any of the words I’ve never been allowed to say?”

“Hm. Can’t argue with that. Open season, kid. Have at it,” he concedes lazily, waving a hand for Peter to continue. 

Nebula watches him closely, oddly delighted by the quick turn of events. 

“Um. Fuck.” 

Tony bites down on his lip to stop a surprising bubble of laughter. Nebula fights back a smile. 

“What?” 

“Just don’t hold back on my account, Strawberry Shortcake.” 

Peter laughs, a strong, vibrant noise. “It feels wrong! It’s like May’s about to charge in and clip me on the ear. And then do the same to you for letting me!”

At this, Tony softens, because Peter is so remarkably pure and of course that’s what he’s thinking about, the wrath of one May Parker. He feels a tinge of guilt at her mention but tries to ignore it. “You’re a puppy dog, Parker.” 

The kid pouts. 

They play nonsensical games to ignore the ticking of the clock. Tony feels an echo of his early teens during rounds of _Never Have I Ever_ (sober, this time) _,_ but this is dampened as Nebula reveals she’d done nothing remotely scandalous according to human standards, but had choked the life out of a galactic crime ring as a child with her bare hands. Peter struggles to swallow that down, to her amusement. 

Amidst their attempts of distraction, Tony’s mind strays to Peter’s comment about May. About how mad she’d be at him. How mad she probably was, given she hadn’t… Tony tries to force that thought out of his head. It was only really in the last year that she’d been able to trust him, fully, after taking Peter to Germany. He might even call them friends. But countless afternoons of mentoring her nephew and often shared meals afterward would never be enough to negate this tragic fate Peter was now bound to, and Tony knows this. A friend couldn’t be forgiven for such a thing. Not that he deserves forgiveness. 

He thinks of Rhodey, and Happy, of how he’d at least been good friends to them, although they were much better at returning the favour than Tony ever was. He hopes (prays?) they’re alive, but Thanos promised fifty percent, so it’s unlikely. 

Peter is immersed in some story Nebula is telling. He catches words like _war,_ and _blood,_ and _Thanos._

_God,_ Tony thinks. _How did this kid end up here?_

* * *

Two hours of oxygen remain. Tony doesn’t want to draw the minutes out into some futile crusade against time and its inevitability. He and Peter sit up against viewing deck chairs, gazes lost somewhere in the stars outside, the only sound their breath. In the dining area, Nebula’s hands are clasped together, almost as if they’re in human prayer, though that’s unlikely the case. No piercing gaze nor spy-trained eye could begin to grasp the thoughts rampaging through her mind, just as she preferred. She’d join the others soon but was giving them some time to say goodbye, their attachment quite clear. 

“I think we should try and go to sleep, or something.”

Tony nods minutely. 

“Probably best to just drift off.”

Their eyes remain fixed on the stars. 

“Look, you and I both know I don’t want to turn this into some sappy goodbye.”

Peter’s voice is small in reply. “Tony Stark doesn’t do sappy goodbyes.”

He grunts in affirmation. 

“But, it wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t tell you that I’m really glad to have met you, kid.”

Peter smiles, cracked, dry lips curving upward. “You too, Mr. Stark.”

They can’t say any more, because most everything had already been said. It had been two years since they’d met, years that were growth and understanding, which turned into a nice kind of closeness that didn’t need to be vocalised to remain true. 

So they close their eyes, shoulder against shoulder as the great beyond beckoned, and not even their fears and anxieties for death can hold back that unrelenting fatigue any longer. 

Peter thinks of May, and Ned, and especially his parents and Ben, who he’d see, finally, again.

And just like he’d said, Tony thinks only of _her_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please give this writer some serotonin and leave a comment! Tell me your thoughts, a line you liked, or what you want to see next!


	3. the guilt of knowing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony, Peter, and Nebula are given a second chance at life, rescued and returned to earth. But what meets them there is not all they hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuses for the wait... but enjoy <3

Flashing hues of white, yellow and golden blind them behind their eyelids. The pulsating light forces Peter to blink rapidly, waking from his sleep in a confused daze. He tries to shield his eyes, but the light grows brighter and brighter until he realises it isn’t just light, it’s something, or someone, moving. Coming closer. 

“Mr. Stark?”

Nothing.

“Mr. Stark?” he says, more urgent.

Tony’s eyelids flutter, watery and struggling to adjust to the sudden brightness. He squints, searching amongst the brightness for any sign of friendliness or hostility. 

“I, I don’t…” he trails off, and for a moment he can swear he sees a woman’s face, smiling, but he supposes he’s either dreaming or hallucinating. 

The light disappears suddenly, darting away from their view and within seconds, the ship creaks and groans, lurching forward.

They’re moving, picking up speed, and Peter’s heart races with an unmatched celerity.

Nebula is the most agitated by this development. 

“Who was that? Where are they taking us?” she asks, launching forward into action as if she weren’t starved and fatigued like the rest of them. 

Tony’s brain kicks into gear, neurons firing tenfold as he works to process this… unbelievable chance thrust in their laps. Maybe he had seen a woman’s face. Maybe they were saved. Rescued.

“God, I hope it's home,” he whispers, clenching his hand around Peter’s knee, a squeeze of hope and fear and adrenaline all rolled into one. They share a look, and Tony sees him, really sees him for the first time since Titan, bone-thin and pallid and near dead, but alive and hopeful and something else. Something stronger. 

“Or somewhere with a cheeseburger,” Peter replies shakily, sharing in Tony’s utter disbelief.

Tony laughs and it sounds like a cry, but he doesn’t try to hide it. Shared trauma fashions incomparable closeness.

_ A cheeseburger. That would be nice.  _

* * *

As they land, the light eases away, until Tony makes out a figure, a woman with blonde hair and a skin-tight body-suit, walking into the compound, faint golden streaks following in the air behind her. He was right, it was some sort of space superhero, or vigilante, that knew the Avengers and where to take them. 

Tony can finally breathe. Back on earth’s soil, the pain in his shoulders releases, tension relinquishing its grip. Nebula, who had been fiddling anxiously with her hands next to him as the mysterious light towed the Milano, stops as they settle onto solid ground. 

Peter’s eyes are closed, (he must have drifted off) and Tony expects for them to open any moment, the ship door creaking open as its mechanisms screech loudly. He lifts a hand to the kid’s shoulder, shaking lightly. 

“Pete, wake up. We’re home.”

No response. He shakes again, harder this time. 

“Pete. Rise and shine.”

Nebula looks over in concern. 

“Peter?” More shaking. “Peter?” Still no response. Tony tries to pull himself up to lean over him, but the movement is agony. 

Nebula races to crouch in front of Peter, squeezing his face between her forefinger and thumb, pulling back his eyelids and checking for a pulse in a flurry of unbearable seconds. 

“Something’s wrong,” she says, dread rolling off her tongue.

Tony tries to move again, to lift Peter, do anything, but he’s too weak. “I can’t move him!” He shouts, legs crumbling beneath him as he uses all of his strength to lift Peter, whose head lolls around like a doll. 

“You have to. Please. Get him into the compound. Someone will be waiting there.”

_ If they aren’t all gone.  _

She nods resolutely, gathering the kid in her arms and lifting him with a gritting of teeth, “I will.” 

His gaze trails after Nebula as she leaves, Peter clutched in her struggling arms. Coughing, Tony pushes himself up as spittle dribbles down his chin with the effort. He only manages to get into the chair, shoulders slumping down with a clenching of his fists in frustration. 

“Tony? Tony!”

Hands grab at his body, two then four. He squints, trying to focus on the voice, but lights are flashing and everything is blurry. 

“Tony, can you hear me?”

“The kid,” he chokes, “have you…” Tony keeps blinking and colours are fuzzy but Rhodey is there and he’s pretty sure Cap is too. They pull him to his feet, gripping Tony tightly by the shoulder as they let him shuffle forward. 

“Yeah, we got him, Tones. Sent him straight to Bruce and Cho.”

Things start to clear up as he heaves in a few ragged breaths. They’re only a few steps from the ship door, and Tony turns to Steve, expression in disarray.

“Couldn’t fight him off,” he whispers.

Something settles over Steve’s face, something Tony cannot discern. 

“Neither could we.” 

Another question floods his mind. 

“Is Pep-”

She crashes into his chest and then pulls away to cradle his face, thinner than anything in her hands. Tears spilling over and bottom lip trembling, she takes in every aspect of his features for the first time in twenty-two days. 

“I’m okay.”

She bites down on her lip, cocking her head to the side, and then shakes it in disbelief. 

“Oh my god.” 

“I’m okay,” Tony repeats, not sure if he was assuring her or himself. 

Pepper touches her forehead to his, Tony leaning into it, and she kisses him on the cheek, before taking Cap’s place at his side, where he kindly steps aside. 

Taking his hand in hers, she and Rhodey lead him into the compound, his buckling knees slowing down the process. Steve follows closely behind. 

“Where’s Nebula?”

“If you’re talking about Smurfette, she took the raccoon and followed Peter,” Rhodey answers, nodding toward the compound doors. 

“Raccoon?”

“Don’t ask.”

“His name is Rocket,” Pepper says softly, squeezing Tony’s hand. “And he’s not a raccoon.” 

Tony coughs, choking on the dryness of his throat. His knees give out, gravity pulling him to the grass, but Rhodey and Pepper stop him before he could. 

He feels a hand on his back. 

“Tony, you okay?”

He retches again, saliva bouncing and bubbling in stringy tendrils from his mouth. Tony waits for it to pass, clearing his throat forcefully until he is able to stand upright again. He has only one thing on his mind now. 

“Pete.” 

They seem to understand, so Pepper releases him from her grip, allowing Cap to step in and quicken their pace. 

* * *

Peter is already hooked to an IV and a multitude of other machines when they arrive, but seeing him so frail and thin is what is most jarring. It’s as if his nightmares had come to life. He doesn’t realise how much weight Peter had lost until seeing the kid in this same bed, where he always stays after particularly nasty patrols. Blood, broken bones? Sure, but it’s never like this. He’s never looked so…  _ small _ .

“What’s the verdict, Doc?” Rhodey queries as they help Tony sit down gently on the adjacent bed. 

“Unconsciousness brought on by hunger and a subsequent drop in heart rate and blood pressure. But he’s going to be fine,” Bruce supplies easily, reaching over to squeeze Tony’s shoulder.

The man breathes a sigh of relief. 

“It’s good to see you, Tony. For a moment there we didn’t think we would.”

“Same here, bud,” he coughs, swallowing back the harsh sting of bile. 

Cho, who was fiddling with the monitor, darts over at the sound after wincing at the rawness of it. She bats her hands at the others so they can move. “You need to get checked out, Mr. Stark. That cough doesn’t sound too good. And frankly, after what Nebula here told me about your wound, I’m surprised it isn’t you that’s unconscious.”

He follows Helen’s gaze to the corner of the room, where Nebula is standing stiffly beside Rocket, their hands clasped together. 

“You sold me out, Sonic,” Tony croaks, leaning back into the soft mattress. He knows there is no fighting Helen. 

Nebula shows no signs of even hearing him. Her eyes remain fixed to the floor, body frozen. She looks… Sad. He doesn’t need to guess why, although she’s known about the death of her friends and sister for a while now. Maybe it’s seeing Rocket that is making it suddenly harder. Her arrival brought the news that his friends had been dusted. 

Nebula said a few things on the ship about her sister, Gamora, and the group of space criminals she lugged around. Though Nebula rarely spoke emotively about anything, he sensed a fondness in her voice whenever she described them, and judging off of Thanos, it seemed like they were the only family she had. Maybe it was the same for Rocket. 

Tony studies him. The strange, raccoon-like creature exudes a sense of solemnity that absorbs the room. His eyes dart away, feeling he’d glimpsed something private. 

“Let’s get you set up,” Bruce says gently, pulling focus away from Nebula and Rocket’s shared silence. 

* * *

Tony sleeps for thirteen hours, and he figures it’s probably the most sleep he’s had in years. Waking with Pepper at his side and Rhodey in a chair by the door is pure joy, and so is the sky, no longer a vast blackness littered with stars but the familiar earthy blue he’s grown to appreciate more than ever. Peter is still, only a few feet away and sleeping soundly, state unchanged throughout the night. 

“Hey,” Pepper whispers, pressing a kiss to his temple. 

“Hey,” he replies, shifting to sit up. 

Rhodey walks over with a soft, sad smile. “Team’s having a meeting in an hour if you’re up to it.”

“Mmm, can’t wait.”

“Do you feel like eating?” Pepper asks, rubbing her thumb over his hand (which Tony thinks is the most delightful feeling). 

“Cheeseburger, please.”

She pats him on the arm, raising from the chair. “I’ll make you a smoothie. Then you shower.”

Rhodey takes Pepper’s chair as she exits into the hallway. 

“She’s just worried.” 

Tony sighs, “Yeah, I know.” 

A few moments pass, the steady beat of monitors perforating the otherwise sad quietness of the room. 

“Happy?”

Rhodey looks at his hands, studying their lines and scars as if nothing interested him more. 

“We haven’t been able to locate him.”

Tony lets out a whoosh of air, eyebrows furrowing as he digests the news. His eyes water, breathing a little laboured, but Rhodey’s hand moves to grip his shoulder, and it’s enough to swallow down the hurt to ask his next question. 

“...And May?”

Rhodey, forefinger pressed on the brim of his nose and visibly pained, almost whispers his response. 

“The same.”

And now, Tony’s facing a different challenge, one insurmountable and impossible to face. He’d prepared himself to die knowing he’d failed May, but now, he’ll have to prepare for something much harder. 

The fallout of her death on Peter. 

Tony glances over at the kid, a dreadful feeling settling in his stomach. 

* * *

He drinks his smoothie (the far too kale-y type he likes, because Tony has always been one extreme or the other), and afterward, Pepper leads him to the private bathroom hidden behind an adjoining door. Sitting him down on the edge of the bathtub, she helps undress him, hesitant fingers resting over all-too-visible bones and caressing his bruises with a careful hand. She tries to hide the winces, especially as her thumb dances over the wound Thanos left him, healed over yet present in the form of a grisly scar, but he sees right through her, just as she does him. 

Together, they enter the shower, Tony taking the stool in his weakened state, and the hot water which bounces in waves of steam is welcomed by his tired muscles. Minute embarrassment to be seen so vulnerable flits away with the soft curve of Pepper’s reassuring smile. She washes his body, sponging his skin gently with an apple-scented soap with fingertips coursing through his hair. He leans into her touch, pressing into her skin which he’d missed so much. She presses her lips to his hair, holding him close for a few seconds before pulling back. 

“Are you okay, honey?”

“Hmmm?”

“Tony, you’re crying.”

Maybe he doesn’t feel the tears under the water, or maybe he just doesn't want to admit she’s right. Maybe it’s finally feeling safe and the release of that, or maybe it’s that Happy is dead, and so is May, and her kid is all alone. 

And he is exhausted, still. 

“I’m fine.”

The lie meets a stern expression, but instead of saying anything, Pepper just switches off the water, deeming him clean. She moves quickly until they are dried, dressed, and sitting back on the edge of the bathtub, her arm resting around his waist. 

"We’re gonna be okay, Tony."

At those words, Tony tries to swallow down a version of reality in which this moment doesn’t exist, and wonders fleetingly what he would have done if Pepper had turned to ash like the other half. How would he have coped without her words, that cured all his ailments and made him feel like he could take a breath in a world underwater? Wave after wave and she was still there, his eternal lifebuoy. 

But she can never negate the deaths of billions. Hundreds and thousands of billions, on earth and planets afar, all that he was responsible for. 

“My fault, Pep. It’s my fault. Billions of people are dead, and that’s just here. And when that kid-” he points at the door behind which Peter is still sleeping soundly, “-wakes up, I’m gonna have to tell him that his aunt is gone….”

He smooths his hands together, trying to distract from the tightness of his throat. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

She sighs, hand moving up Tony’s back to caress his neck. 

“As hard as you try, honey, there’s always going to be a fight you can’t win. There was no stopping him. You did everything in your power and more, you always do. As for Peter? You’ll do the same. I know you will.” 

Her words are a small comfort, but Pepper can’t atone for his mistakes, and he knows that. Tony is responsible, and no number of assurances will ever be able to make him forget, or push down the guilt that comes with knowing he could have done more, fought harder, done something different. 

He squeezes Pepper’s hand. 

“Happy’s gone.” 

Her eyes shine, unshed tears glazing over depths unknown, but Tony sees her sadness, her sorrow, as if he were looking at a mirror into his own. 

“I know,” she says, voice tight. 

A beat. 

“I miss him. A lot.”

He can tell she’s fighting tears, and her words are enough to give a glimpse into her past twenty-three days. Losing Happy, Pepper’s closest friend and protector, all the while not knowing if Tony was dead or ever coming home. He holds her tighter. 

Neither wants to open the bathroom door and face the reality of the outside. So, they stay there, holding each other close for as long as they could, a small comfort in their grief and fears for what’s to come.    
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Check out my tumblr @irondadismyreligion where I post chapter sneak peeks and other marvel stuff!


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